Comprehensive Long Span Paired-End-Tag Mapping Reveals Recurrent Fusion Genes in Gastric Cancer Genomes. Homo sapiens

Somatic genome rearrangements and recurrent fusion genes are thought to play important roles in cancer development. We applied the long span DNA-PET approach to comprehensively characterize the SVs of 15 gastric cancer genomes and uncovered 1,945 somatic SVs. Genomic PCR and capillary sequence confirmed 10 recurrent SVs involving tumor suppress genes, WWOX and FHIT. There were total 131 fusion genes predicted by somatic SVs and 99 of them could be validated by genomic PCR. The further RT-PCR results indicated the expression of 47 fusion genes and 11 of them were in frame fusion genes. Screening the in frame fusion genes in another 85 gastric primary tumors uncovered 5 recurrent fusion genes with at frequencies of 2-5%.